Nightingale

DVD, Voyager S7 (Nightingale)

Kim in command! Tired of being the sidekick and the lowest ranked officer on the ship, Ensign Kim gets to find out what being Captain is all about! One of the last episodes I never saw, this turned out well, and succeeded in impressing me, despite watching it almost ten years after it was made - not always the case when you watch an episode you've not seen before. I think what made it were the way events showed Harry as the guy who is now experienced, and one who yearns for the respect that he feels would be his if it weren't for the unique set of circumstances Voyager finds itself in - being in a place where there are no replacement crew, and aside from death, very little is going to change the command structure as the senior positions are permanently filled.

It made me wonder about long-term missions on other ships, that might be going off on a decade-long mission into the Beta Quadrant or some such. The same problem would exist for those crews, but in their case they would sign up for it beforehand, and know when they were scheduled to return, likely gaining promotion for completing such a long mission. With Kim and Voyager they don't know when they'll get back, so the hope of advancement must be curtailed in the need for simply surviving. Surviving is the rationale of the aliens Kim helps, trying to keep their people alive through a blockade.

The alien ships and faces were better than some alien-of-the-week's, and reminded me of the Vorta, as their enemies, the Annari, did the Cardassians, purely in aesthetic terms. At first their similarity crossed my mind, as I wondered if there was a connection, but in the Trek universe many races appear alike without actually being connected. The CGI was good, especially the ships battling over the planetary shots, and Voyager's stopover on a rocky planet looked good and provided a rare sight of people walking on the hull (sadly not in closeup). Levar Burton is a good Trek director, and I noted one impressive camera move which began at conn, moved over Paris, to Janeway and Chakotay, who then move round to Tuvok, the camera moving in close to his station, all in one seamless movement.

Kim has generally been on the bottom of the episode list as well as the rank, and shares this dubious honour with Chakotay and Neelix, so to see him star in something that saw him go through change made a difference. He does kind of come full circle, in that he wants to prove himself, shows the flaws in his approach to command, ending the episode knowing he's not ready for captaincy, but adding the 'yet' to show that he still believes himself capable. One of the few essentials the episode lacked was that of a scene with Janeway in the mess hall where he discusses the experience. He could have appreciated the stamina needed as a Captain, while she could have given him encouragement that he showed promise. In the event it ends with these sentiments unsaid.

For Harry to get to challenge himself in a new way, coming up against a mirror of himself in the young soldier he recruits for conn, having his mistakes noted by Seven, and feeling duped by the nature of the mission, he learns a lot, and it's a pleasure seeing that, instead of the occasional 'scanning, Captain...' he so often gets relegated to. The B-story, with Icheb getting completely the wrong end of the stick with B'Elanna was gently amusing, even if it has been done before, and the poor young man should watch out now that he's alerted the Doctor that he would be open to social tutoring - it's easy to get the Doc to start giving advice, near impossible to get him to stop!

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